A Year Long Journey to Health and Wellness

Whole30 Preparation Day: Week 1

Today I embark on another Whole30 journey, a time for focusing on health and wellness in the new year. My wedding day is currently 230 days away, August 20, 2016. I am anxious to get started on this new adventure and I have spent much of today preparing for week one. Around Thanksgiving Kevin (fiance) and I decided we needed to make a health and wellness plan. Due to the amount of holiday parties and such, we focused our attention on working out 5 days a week from Thanksgiving until the present time. Often times, it is a struggle to dramatically change one part of your life. So now that we have the fitness aspect of our lives down, it’s time to change the food part! I want to create a good relationship with food and reward myself with things other than food, which is a significant problem for me.

On this “Whole30” adventure, I plan on continuing this much longer than 30 days. On my last Whole30 I completed it for over 45 days and then sabotaged myself with visits from family and excuses regarding eating habits and having company. I have been focused for the past couple of weeks scowering for some new, simple recipes and am well prepared for the week ahead. My best friend left this morning to head back to Maine and my fiance and I were grocery shopping at 5am. Such a treat to have the whole store to ourselves! We came home, napped and then cooked meals for the next week or two.

As a fair warning to all those reading my posts, in my first Whole30 I realized something that I already know… I HATE eggs. I just plain do not care for them and never have. The other thing I did on my first W30 was followed every rule perfectly. There are somethings I am confessing immediately that will change in this round.

With that, I do occasionally break some cardinal Whole30 rules and I will be fessing up to them here as well as ranting about some pet peeves I see people doing while on the Whole30.

I will occasionally have a fruit smoothie for breakfast that is Whole30 Compliant, breaking the rule of “chewing your food”. But I cannot eat eggs all of the time. The thought of eating eggs right now makes me ill.

One of my favorite breakfast recipes breaks a couple rules, but they are rules that I am okay with. Technically the Whole30 rules out the use of Vanilla, but in my Grain Free Banana Muffins, I will use Vanilla. I am not trying to have “sex with my pants on” but I struggle wtih a breakfast alternative that is not eggs. Typically for breakfast I eat a breakfast bar (Special K Red Berry to be specific), but I haven’t found a Whole30 Compliant Bar that I like and isn’t packed with sugar or other grossness. I am very adamant on the Whole30 that if you supplement your days with tons of fruit and Larabars that you are sabotaging yourself. The book “It Starts with Food” does a nice job of pointing out that your body is unable to differentiate the difference between the natural sugar in fruits and the sugar in sweets. To me, these are very much the same. As far as my journey to kill the sugar dragon, consistently giving my body sugar whether it’s natural or not DOES NOT kill the cravings. I’m serious. If you’re going to do this and be real with this, do it right!

Another pet peeve I have is saying “I slipped up”. There is not slipping up, food did not fall into your mouth accidentally. Suck it up and take responsibility for the food that enters your body.

I have never been a “snacker”. So you won’t see any posts about appropriate snacks. I just eat my 3 meals a day.

I am also microwave incompetent. I cannot operate one.

As another advisory, I really enjoy organization and bullets with blog posts!

Now that my personal confessions are out of the way we can get down to business! This weeks meal plan! Shout out to Kevin for excellent assistance in the kitchen! He also made me a bunch of Cauliflower rice not noted in photos! He is quite supportive and is compliant for Whole30 dinners, but he eats his own food for lunch. He has a love-love relationship with cheese that cannot be broken. ❤ I love him regardless.

Today, we FINALLY purchased a larger food processor. This was an excellent buy! On Sundays when we do food prep, he processes it into the rice, and we keep it uncooked in the fridge. I pull it out for dinner when needed and make my own personal batch with a little touch of olive oil and it’s perfect everytime!

Things I can’t live without in my kitchen:

Blender

Food Processor

Crazy amounts of tupperware

Lunch Crock Pot This thing is a GOD AMONG MEN! It heats up my work lunches. BUY ONE!

So that wraps it up for today! I am anxious to start this journey. Tonight I will have my farewell popcorn with m&ms in it, my guilty pleasure. Until tomorrow!